Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on June 2 pardoned or commuted the sentences of 81 protesters arrested following last year's disputed presidential election. The pardons were made on request of the head of the Supreme Judicial System of Iran, Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, who described the pardoned protesters as repentant. They were announced the same day that defeated presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karrubi applied for permission to hold demonstrations marking the one-year anniversary of the elections. Pardons are common occurrences on national religious observances in Iran; June 2 marked the birth of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad, a revered figure in Shi'a Islam.

A top UN official on June 2 called on the US to cease CIA drone strikes in Pakistan until more accountability for the strikes exists. UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston said that, despite their usefulness against terrorist organizations, the international community is kept uninformed of when and where drone attacks are authorized, allowing the CIA to conduct strikes virtually anywhere in the world without having to answer for its actions.

The UN Security Council on June 1 called for a "prompt, impartial, credible and transparent investigation" into the previous day's raid by Israeli commandos on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip in which 10 civilians on a Turkish ship were killed. Reaffirming two earlier resolutions calling for a two-state solution (Resolution 1850) and unimpeded humanitarian assistance (Resolution 1860), the Council urged Israel to allow other nations to retrieve their wounded and deceased and to ensure delivery of the aid materials aboard the ships.

Pakistan's Supreme Court ruled May 25 that the cleric accused by India of plotting the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks cannot be imprisoned due to lack of evidence. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed is the head of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which was allegedly behind the attacks. Pakistan put Saeed under virtual house arrest one month after the onslaught, where he remained except for a three-month period last summer, but the Lahore High Court ordered his release in October. The Supreme Court's ruling could strain the already fragile relationship between India and Pakistan, which recently started peace talks.

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled May 21 in al-Maqaleh v. Gates that detainees held at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan cannot bring habeas corpus challenges in US courts. The circuit court reversed the district court's ruling, which allowed habeas challenges by three Bagram detainees pursuant to the Supreme Court's test in Boumediene v. Bush. Chief Judge David B. Sentelle, delivering the opinion of the three-judge panel, stated that the district court underestimated the significance of Bagram being located in an area of armed conflict, which differentiates the defendants' jurisdictional status from those detained at Guantánamo Bay. The court held that the current case is more comparable to 1950's Johnson v. Eisentrager, where the Supreme Court ruled that US courts had no jurisdiction over war criminals held in a US-administered German prison.

The government of Thailand on May 19 imposed a curfew on Bangkok and other areas of the country even as leaders of the United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship, also known as the Red Shirts, announced an end to the two-month long conflict in Bangkok and surrendered to police. Members of the Red Shirts, known for supporting ousted prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, refused to accept the end of the demonstrations and began setting fire to parts of Bangkok.

Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) announced on May 16 that the partial recount of the March parliamentary elections will not alter seat allocations awarded in accordance with the provisional results. The commission held that the original count showed no signs of fraud or major irregularities, and confirmed the two-seat lead of the the Iraqiya coalition of Iyad Allawi over al-Maliki's State of Law coalition.

A lawyer from Spain's National Court Office of the Prosecutor on May 12 petitioned judge Ismael Moreno to issue arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents who allegedly kidnapped a German citizen of Lebanese descent in 2003 as part of the Bush administration's "extraordinary rendition" program. Khaled el-Masri claims that the CIA kidnapped him while he was traveling to Macedonia in 2003 and transported him to a secret detention facility in Afghanistan where he was held for four months. The Office of the Prosecutor alleges that the court has jurisdiction to issue the warrants because the agents made a stop in Spanish territory using hidden identities without official Spanish government authorization to do so.